How to Buy a Healthier, Naturally Pure Wine

Healthier wine choices can be made by focusing upon red wines with 12.5% or less alcohol. These three were purchased at Star Store, a local purveyor in Langley, Washington, on Whidbey Island.

I like wine.

Scratch that. I love wine.

But as I got a bit older I realized my body was becoming less tolerant of wine.

I could no longer have a glass or two with dinner and not pay a price in the form of interrupted sleep, night sweats, hangovers and headaches.

I was on the verge of giving up wine when I stumbled across an approach to winemaking often referred to as “dry farm” winemaking. Stripped to its fundamentals, dry farm winemaking is a return to Old World approaches to making wines.

I began buying wine through their online store and it literally changed my life. It turned out I didn’t need to stop drinking wine, I just needed to begin buying the right wine.

Meet Dry Farm Wines

“In nature, you’ll find everything you need” is the philosophy of winemaker Claus Preisinger, of Volker Wine Co. in Austria.

Preisinger is one of a growing number of vintners focused on making certified biodynamic, sustainably-grown, natural wines whose vintages are the type curated by Dry Farm Wines.

Dry Farm Wines focuses on bringing to their customers wines that are from small, sustainable family farms that adhere to strict standards of healthy best practices.

The list of attributes of wines in their selection is intriguing. From “dry” or no irrigation farming to reliance upon wild native yeast in fermentation, the wines are as “primal” as they get in their reliance upon nature’s fundamental influences on winemaking.

Perhaps more importantly, they lab test the wines they sell in order to maintain specific standards of purity.

They do this because wine is one of the few food groups that isn’t required to have a contents label. Yet, there are 76 legal additives that are approved for use in winemaking, taking what was once an artisan craft and turning it an industrialized, sterile shelf product.

When you buy wines from Dry Farm Wines you can be assured that they are additive free, sugar and carb free, with lower alcohol, lower sulfites, mycotoxin and mold free, and ideally fit for those choosing Paleo and Ketogenic diets. If you’d like to learn more you can read a list of attributes of the wines they curate on their website.

Dry Farms Wines Alternatives

Buying wines online for home through Dry Farms Wines means you’re in control of what your drinking from your own collection.

But what happens when you’re away from home, in a restaurant, or simply seeking wine on impulse at your local market, to be consumed that night?

I’ve learned over the years to look for specific types of wines that come close to the Dry Farms Wines characteristics.

The most significant qualities that I look for are a red wine from France or Italy, with 12.5% or less alcohol. This gets you as close as you can get to a no carb, no sugar dry farm style of wine.